Wednesday, February 27, 2013

Hello! It's been a while since I've posted but I promise I am still alive. :) I delivered a Common Core training session last Monday, have been making and planning things for my daughter's 4th birthday, and have been fighting a yucky viral infection over the last few days. But...I have several things I want to share with you over the next week!

Let's start with today's craft. Hang tight for a freebie at the end!

Today we read Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss. Love that story! We made this adorable craft to go with it:

We started by coloring a paper plate gray. While the kiddos were making sure all of the white was covered on their plate I was busy trying to perfect a pattern of elephant ears for them to trace. After the plate was colored and the ears were traced on to purplish construction paper, we added details to the face and cut a hole in the center of the plate for the trunk. We used a gray sock on our hand/arm (from a pack in the men's department) for the trunk. Then we wrapped a pipe cleaner around a large pom-pom to resemble the "clover" that Horton places the "speck" on. The speck was a mini pom-pom that we glued on top. Voila! Horton and his speck in less than 30 minutes! :)

We've been up to a lot of whimsical fun this week but we are pulling it into our station work too. My kids have loved practicing time with this one:

Here's a count the room activity and a place value match we have used for reviewing teen numbers in math.

You can grab both of the number sense activities for free by clicking here or the image below. I hope you enjoy it!

Friday, February 8, 2013

Happy Friday! I wanted to share a short and sweet phonics activity with you that is always a big hit in my classroom. It just so happens that our 100th day of school falls right around the time we focus on short o. This is perfect for the mounds of un-strung cereal that didn't make it onto a 100th day necklace. {Anyone else always seem to overbuy?}

We brainstorm as many short o words as we can come up with together and then take turns recording them onto chart paper. This doubles as practice for word families and rhyming words too! Then, I provide my kids with a cotton swab and a small cup of glue as well as a handful of leftover "o" cereal. They get to work making their own lists of short o words, glueing cereal in place of each letter o.

Fun and simple. Of course, you can always pull patterns into it, or long o vs. short o. I leave this activity open-ended and my kids usually decide to take it to the next level on their own. I love watching their little brains in action. :)

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Nowadays it is more important than ever to keep a little "play" in our classrooms, wouldn't you agree?

We know that children thrive on inquiry-based and hands-on learning so it only makes sense to provide them with as many opportunities for this as possible. However, if your schedule is anything like mine you struggle with prioritizing and getting it all in.

One of the ways I try to touch on some of these necessities at the same time is through the use of sensory tubs. They provide an opportunity for play AND learning with a sensory experience that sparks the interest of my students.

This week I introduced a new tub into my stations. We have recently started a space unit in science so it seemed only fitting to create a tub that was centered around this theme. Most of the materials for this tub came from various art supplies I had on hand. I combined sparkly pom-poms, pipe cleaners, etc. with some light-up toys, shuttles and Buzz Lightyear figurines, and bouncy balls. I threw in some of those stretchy, funny-shaped toys from the party favors aisle too. I used a bag of aquarium rocks as my filler (P.S.- Those rocks are a lot heavier than I thought!) and found a package of glow-in-the-dark stars, comets, etc. at the dollar store. Here is what the tub looked like with everything sitting on top...before it got throughly mixed up:

For the beginning of the week I used this tub as my skill builder activity in math stations. I programmed each of the glow-in-the-dark stars with a number 15-19 (those are the numbers I am hitting hard this week.). I used this printable from my Jumpin' Jupiter packet and had my students go on a "Star Search" during their station time. When a star was found, they were asked to identify it's number and color in a star with that number on it on their printable. I included a color by the code to reinforce those color words as well.

The tub will be transitioning from my math stations to my literacy stations tomorrow. I plan to incorporate some medial vowel practice into it for the end of the week. I've printed smaller versions of CVC and CCVC cards from Jumpin' Jupiter that my kiddos will be hunting for and categorizing according to middle sounds.

Click on the picture below to download the free preview file for your own copy of the Star Search printable as well as a blank one so that you can write numbers of your own choosing for practice.

I hope you can use it!

Any other ideas for station activities with this tub? I'd love to hear your ideas!

I can't wait to bring this into my classroom this week. I've got some great ideas of supplemental and sensory activities to combine with it. Look for details in a post later this week!

Here are a few space-themed freebies I created a while back. They are not a part of this packet but I wanted to make sure I shared them with you again just in case you missed them.

By the way, did you know that there is a HUGE sale today? Everything in my Tpt store is on sale for 20% off. You can use the code "SUPER" at checkout to receive an additional 10% off. 10% off of my sale items will land you a whoppin' 28% off everything today!

You can find my new Jumpin' Jupiter unit and all of my other products on sale today ONLY:

Friday, February 1, 2013

Can you believe it is February already? Where did January go!?! I haven't hooked up with good ol' Farley in a while so here goes...

I think most of these are pretty self explanatory but I will add a few tidbits of info for you!

Don't you love the old Madeline episodes? You know....the little girl from Paris. My daughter will be 4 in March and she is totally digging Madeline. She even asked Santa for all of the Madeline books for Christmas! Santa brought her an outfit too. Here she is:

I need to get busy working on my Space Unit! I'm hoping to get it posted tomorrow! Here is a sneak peak of two math activities.